ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From: Roger Dame, December 2008
Opus 1688 was donated to a church in Manchester New Hampshire (around 1945).
Who ever installed it, made a poor attempt at making it a church organ.
(dumped all the percussions and toy counter, replace the vox with an aoline,
replaced the regulators with a schimmer, remove the second touch and
finally swapped the solo and accomp cables to make a great and swell).
I bought it in 1985.
I restored it back to a single chamber model E. What little I could find about the model E was not very flattering and it became obvious why having played it for several years as a model E. Although I had tried to overcome the urge to modify having retained the old keyboards, pedal board (with second touch restored) and even the pneumatic relay).... it was bad (my understanding is that even Jesse Crawford had some choice words for this model).
So it has been modified (given what it had gone through at the church, I didn't feel too bad about the mods):
1) 3 manual Barton console shell, new OSI WurliTzer keyboards and pedalboard with second touch.
2) Ztronix mutiplexer
3) SSLL 128 level combination system
4) 21 ranks (still have the core 6 original ranks), have other WuliTzer ranks and new ranks from OSI (WurliTzer reproductions).
5) 5 tuned percussions
6) full battery of traps and sound effects
7) New 7 1/2 hp blower
8) 6 new OSI WurliTzer style regulators
If anyone would like to see this, they can contact me:
Roger Dame
147 East Main Street, PO BOX 867
West Brookfield, Ma 01585
(508)867-4420